Here's another killer batch of Bonneville pictures from the Mike Smith Collection as promised, and there are plenty more great cars to check out. I believe most of these shots are from the '59 SCTA meet- Obviously some of them don't have the handy da... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Image #5... is that Mickey Thompson's Challenger I all taken apart? The size of it seems right, and those exhaust pipes, the tanks, if you've ever built the model kit of that car, that all seems very familiar. And in '59 the car didn't yet have the superchargers on the motors under those tarps. Maybe? If so, pretty cool. I've never seen that picture of the Challenger before, and there are not as many photos of its earliest configurations. Thanks for posting these!
Interesting. 12 pictures but only 11 appear. Is picture 10 hiding something? How fast did the minibike run I wonder? Snap back to it, wake up, quit daydreaming. It's been a long day.
I don't believe that's the Challenger 1. I believe the Challenger 1 was powered by four Pontiac engines
Wheel Man, I downloaded the picture and enlarged it. You really can't see much of the engines but it has the same exhaust, tanks, layout etc. as Challenger. Pretty sure it is. No other car like it.
Here is the cover of the December 1959 Hot Rod Magazine with the Challenger on the cover. As you can see the car is powered be four fuel injected engines, This shot was taken at the Sept 1959 meet. The photo on this site is a twin engine Chrysler with the driver sitting between them.
The twin Chrysler car is not the Challenger. The other car all apart is the Challenger for sure. The headers, engine placement and water tanks are the give away.